Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris Creech
But isn't part of the concept of the Beltline that it lead and form an anchor for development? It seems that's always the catch-22. You build the transit when the land is fairly cheap and there's fewer infrastructure complications, and residents and local politicos are more likely to support it. Or you wait until it's "needed" and the land is then sky-high and you have a whole infrastructure network to deal with, and residents that will fight you because of the noise, inconvenience and because they don't want the neighborhood to change.
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Well to add to your argument.... further
The Beltline is more than just a transit program. In fact only about a third of the total end cost is transit related. Some areas couldn't support the density development going in without transit.
So there is a catch-22... with transit the land is more valuable (and provides higher tax proceeds) without it across the whole region it has to be zoned less dense (and never has that taxable value).
The other side is... Many of the redevelopment sites to some extent or another are brownfields. They have remained mostly undeveloped and untouched for two main reasons: 1) There is a big expense to cleaning them up properly so they are suitable for development again 2) Even if a developer cleans up one brownfield on their own.... the value of what they develop and sell is held down by neighboring brownfield sites. Therefore if you come up with a Beltline plan to clean up all of the brownfields within the TAD developing one site becomes more marketable, since buyers know future areas will be cleaned up as well.
However, I must say.... This is also one problem/uphill battle for the Beltline to try to gain funding for the sales tax for regional transportation projects. The original intent was to take care of regional and in large part intercounty transportation. In many places in Atlanta the main roads (and in some cases only roads) to pass a county border are state or federal highways.
The Beltline is targeted at fostering residential neighborhood growth.
However, on a good note.... there are some projects that make the Beltline usable for some aspects of regional transportation and there are some projects that can make the Beltline cheaper to build in the long run. This is partly why they are restructuring their proposals to include Atlanta streetcars, which to be honest is kind of starting to circumvent the point of the tax.
I would focus on segments of the Beltline that could potentially be used by portions of a Cobb County LRT line. An Armour Yard Marta station would decrease the length the Beltline would need to travel to connect to MARTA.
The northeast segment and a small connection to the East-West streetcar could be pitched as a connecting point/extension of the planned Emory LRT.
That alone is a kick-start for Beltline transit would decrease the cost to the Beltline TAD to make building the rest more sustainable.
Sorry.... Im sort of trailing off topic